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Brian
Wilkes, Fine Artist and Author
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Portraits - Seeking the Animal and the Divine in each face. As an art student I remember learning that "Amateurs do landscapes, masters do portraits." It's taken me decades to understand this. No garden, forest, or mountain will complain that you made them look fat.The portrait must satisfy both the artist's integrity and the subject's self-esteem. "Country Values" - Celebrating the strength and nobility of the American farmer, rancher, and worker. When I was young, the most successful and influential American illustrator was Norman Rockwell. Millions grew up with his Saturday Evening Post artwork shaping their intellectual and emotional views of what it meant to be an American, in a career spanning the Great Depression, World War Two, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights movement. Influenced by his
famous WW2 series, The Four Freedoms, I wanted to remind the public of
the time when Americans were honored for feeding the world, assinging
to each works a value such as "Commerce", "Preparedness",
"Cooperative Labor", "Honor System". As a descendant
of farmers and ranchers as well as kings and emperors, my art celebrates
both the strength of humble country values and the romance of chivalry
and castles, with works designed to compare the nobility of farmers and
ranchers with the vulnerability of power and royalty. Few realize that
the first waves of settlers in British North America were disproportionately
the younger sons of noble houses who had no land inheritance. I believe
this genetic makeup contributes to the success of the American nation
and to our attitude of service to the rest of the world. It's infuriating
when I hear coastal elites call rural America "flyover country",
and the people "rubes," "hicks", or a "basket
of deplorables". "Indigenous Americas" - Celebrating the Native people, lands, and cultures of the western Hemisphere. "Destinations" |
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